It is most satisfactory to read of the excellent condition
of the Navy. But the very causes of satisfaction will themselves become a danger if we allow them to soothe us into a false sense of security. It is tempting to many people to say, "With such a Fleet as this, the greatest ever assembled, we are surely safe. Now at last we may sleep soundly in our beds." But the truth is that the Navy is a defence only in the degree in which it is an instrument of offence. Its function is not to stay by our coasts to guard them at close quarters, but to seek out and destroy the enemy wherever he may be. Even if the Navy were twice as large as the Fleet which the King has just visited the need would remain to set it free for its proper work. A sense of insecurity at home and among merchant shipping would chain the Navy to the coasts. This sense of insecurity can be allayed, and the Navy be set free, in two ways : (1) by having all men so trained to arms that a foreign invader would not dream of taking the risk of landing ; (2) by offering a State guarantee to shinning so that in war commerce would be carried on exactly as in peace. At the beginning of a war commercial panic, not the actual losses of merchant ships, would be our worst enemy.
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